


We Men Are Wretched Things

by LizzBot



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 80s vibez, Angst, Author Is Not Religious, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Author is not Christian, Badass Levi Ackerman, Chapter Lengths May Vary, Character's Name Spelled as Miche, Child Abuse, Childhood Friends, Dialogue Heavy, Erwin Smith Being an Asshole, Erwin Smith Being an Idiot, Erwin Smith Is A Little Shit, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hanji has ADHD, Homophobia, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I chug out these chapters in accordance to how much mario kart theme music i can take in a sitting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, Is this too many tags, Levi Ackerman Has Trust Issues, Levi Ackerman Needs a Hug, Levi Ackerman in Love, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Modern Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan, Mutual Pining, No Smut, Nonbinary Hange Zoë, Only sometimes tho, Past Abuse, Past Furlan Church/Levi, Past Relationship(s), Pining Erwin Smith, Please Kill Me, Polyamorous Character, Religious Conflict, Religious Content, Scientist Hange Zoë, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, The Author Regrets Everything, Yes i spell Hanji and Miche weirdly no i dont know why its just 2014 AOT quotev vibes okay, hanji is the best friend, honestly they're both pining, how could i forget that tag, huh idk, i dont know dialogue is my coping mechanism, mention of dubcon, no beta we die like men, okay no explicit smut but there is run ups and implications, omg, there is a very loose plot somewhere if you squint, who knows whats happening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29765730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzBot/pseuds/LizzBot
Summary: Erwin knew Levi, even after eleven or so years. Erwin knew him before the professor even asked his name because by God he hadn't changed a bit. He still had that grumpy expression and a tendency to bounce his leg whenever he was asked a question. Erwin would know Levi from anywhere.~~Erwin and Levi met as children, after a chance encounter (also known as playground assault) lead to them becoming friends when they were nine. Less than a few months later, Levi seemed to have vanished but Erwin, in his childhood naivety, was convinced they'd meet again.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith, Moblit Berner/Hange Zoë, Nanaba/Mike Zacharias, Petra Ral/Hange Zoë
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. Foreword,

There’s a lot to be said about this fic, and a lot I don’t know about it. I’m pretty much as clueless as the next guy. Very little of this is planned; I have a few key scenes and a few ideas for filler chapters. I’m meditating on certain plotlines and ideas but beyond that I have no clue how this will end. I don’t intend for this fic to be super emotional and sad, but I can’t exactly say it will be happy either. It struggles with a lot of themes that are personal to me and I’m trying to balance them between my experiences without making it seem too real, yknow? There are some important things to point out though, just for clarifications.

I do not plan on having the ‘main’ cast of AOT feature in this fic, so if you were hoping for Eren, Mikasa, Armin etc then this fic probably isn’t for you. Since Erwin and Levi are considerably older than them, and I’m writing those two as if they were around university age, it only makes sense not to include them. At best you might get a mention of the characters, since they’d probably be babies at around the time of this fic. It’s also important to note that whilst this fic isn’t set in England, it takes a lot of English features into account (healthcare, housing, religion and beliefs) since I’m English and it’s what I know best. In addition, we can probably equate the era to late seventies or early eighties, or thereabouts, just because I like the era.

This does mean that, accurate to the times, this fic will include homophobia and mentions of it to varying degrees. This could be triggering, as I don’t have any intention to censor homophobic slurs used within the fic. I am LGBT+ myself and I don’t see any point in sugar-coating the reality of the seventies and eighties. The large majority of the feature characters in this fic will be LGBT+, because I can’t help myself and that’s all there is to it honestly. On the topic of triggers, there will also be mentions of child abuse and child neglect as well as mild mentions of past dubcon. I will be tagging chapters with possible triggers with a * and a small descriptor of what triggers that chapter includes. I will mark the beginning of triggering section with an asterisk as well, and I’ll try my best to make the fic readable without necessarily needing to read those parts. Each new chapter will have a short ‘last chapter’ catchup that will brief the contents of the previous chapter, so hopefully people who don’t feel comfortable reading certain sections will still be able to continue on. I don’t plan to go into depth about these (meaning nothing graphic, honestly most of it will just be brought up during conversation rather than avid descriptors), but they will be discussed regardless.

Just a word of warning, I am possibly the worst person ever when it comes to planning. I hope to update every week at best, and fortnightly at worst. Will I stick to this? You can bet your arse I won’t. Don’t expect too much from me. I’m not the best writer if I’m honest but I love passion projects as much as the next pining romantic.

With that awkward foreword over, we can get on with the story.


	2. The Boy on the Yard.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introductory chapter, to where it all began.

In all of his nine years of living, Erwin didn’t think he’d ever been hit so hard in his entire life. His whole face stung and moving it was almost as painful as that time he fractured his arm. Almost. It felt like his tooth was chipped too, and he sure hoped not because he liked his teeth and he didn’t like the Dentist. He didn’t want false teeth like his grandfather. Gross. Honestly he wasn’t even sure why he’d been hit so hard in the first place; it’s not like he was a troublemaker and he got along well enough with the other kids (that or he just chose to avoid the weird ones. It worked out in his favour either way). Erwin couldn’t even remember being hit anywhere remotely as hard as he had in that moment, with his back shoved up against the wall and some scrawny little kid looting his school bag. 

Said scrawny kid seemed to have his eye on his lunchbox, which was inconveniently tucked right at the bottom of his bag which meant all of his other stuff was going to end up on the floor and Erwin got the feeling that the kid wasn’t the type to help pick it all up afterwards. When the boy finally got grabs on the lunchbox he seemed to eye it with a devilish glee before popping the lid open. Normally he would intervene and stop him. Normally it was Hanji raking his lunchbox though and they weren’t scary as much as they were just plain weird. Erwin could deal with Hanji and her impulsive habits. He wasn’t sure how to deal with the mystery kid who quite possibly just gave him the worlds worst black eye. The kid seemed to be picking around, unsure of what to grab. Erwin’s father had a tendency of packing too much stuff anyway. Surely he wouldn’t miss some of it.

“What the hell is this?” The kid snorted, holding up a clingfilm covered sandwich and tossing it around in his hands.

“It’s uh...it’s a sandwich.” Erwin responded, trying to sound at least a little bit polite. He didn’t want his other eye bruised as well.

“Yeah, got that. What type?”

“Cheese, I think.”

“Gross.” The kid wrinkled his nose and shoved it back into the lunchbox.

He kept digging around, stashing Erwin’s favourite crisps and a small packet of biscuits. Eventually, after seemingly getting what he came for, he tossed the box back to Erwin. Occupied with nursing his bruising eye with his hands, he missed the box and it fell on the floor instead.

“If you were hungry I would’ve just shared my food with you.” Erwin called out as the boy began to walk away with Erwin’s favourite snack in clutch.

“Like I’d want to share with you.” The boy yelled back in response, before ducking away into the school.

By the time he got home, the bruise on his eye had swelled pretty badly. At school he got away by using the excuse that he was just playfighting with his friends but he wasn’t so sure it would go down like that with his father. As usual, he was right. His dad didn’t believe a word of it but didn’t really press the issue either. His eye still really hurt though, and he got a bag of frozen peas to put over it as a consolation prize for getting his butt kicked by some scrawny lunch-stealer. 

Waking up the next morning he noticed that, whilst it hurt significantly less, his face didn’t look very pretty. On the uphand, his tooth was most certainly not chipped and he didn’t have to go see a Dentist to get grandfather teeth. Around his eyes was all bluey purple and mottled, not to mention super swollen. He hated to think how it would look if he hadn’t iced it for a few hours before he went to sleep. The scrawny lunch-stealer (as Erwin had so eloquently dubbed him) didn’t show up much around school; it didn’t look like he ever came to class but he’d always loiter around the yard at breaktimes and lunch. Erwin just figured he was in separate classes. Sometimes they did that for kids who were disruptive or troublesome, and Erwin got the feeling that the boy didn’t suit an average classroom environment very well. After asking around, Erwin learned that the kid had pretty much stolen lunch off of everyone in the year group. He never seemed to bring his own, for whatever reason, and no one had ever seen him with his parents either. He just walked himself to and from school. There were rumours that he lived with his uncle who just happened to be a huge crime boss and that’s why he couldn’t show his face around the area, but Erwin highly doubted that. The kid looked too scruffy and underfed to be the nephew of a crime boss. If his uncle was that well-regarded in...crime business it seemed unlikely that he’d let his nephew wander around school dressed like Oliver Twist.

Still, Erwin felt a little sorry for him. Of course he was mad that he had bruised up his face and stolen his favourite foods from his lunchbox but the kid probably just wasn’t being looked after and was hungry. If he sat with them at lunch, Erwin wouldn’t send him away. His dad always packed too much food anyway, although he wouldn’t surrender his cookies so easily this time. Hanji had taken to teasing him over getting his lunch stolen, and knowing them it was unlikely that they would shut up about it anytime soon. Not that he couldn’t take the teasing, it was just a little irritating.

Irritating, like almost everything else Hanji did. On the uphand, they let Erwin copy their science homework and he wasn’t going to start complaining about that now. His school morning passed pretty uneventfully, it’s not like their was much to really disturb in a class full of nine to ten year olds. Then lunch hit, and Erwin found himself oddly anticipating the arrival of the boy from the yard. He didn’t really expect anything but he was sort of hoping the kid would join them. It wasn’t as though he was trying to take the boy on as a kind of charity friendship but rather that he just found himself interested in the boy, for better or for worse. As luck would have it, a familiar face sat himself in the seat next to Erwin.

“...you said we could share.” he muttered, looking down awkwardly at the table.

Hanji raised their brows a little but said nothing, and Miche was too busy trying to show off to Nanaba to even be paying attention.

Erwin opened his lunchbox and grinned, all toothy and stupid.

“Yeah, but we go halfers on the cookies. Deal?”

“Deal.”

From that day, the kid would find his way to Erwin’s table almost every lunch. They found out, after a bit of probing, that he was called Levi Ackerman and he did in fact live with his Uncle (but he seemed a bit reluctant to talk about it). His family had originally moved from Asia because of the war and he and his mum moved in with his Uncle who had migrated a few years prior. Levi didn’t talk about his mum a lot, if it all, and he’d get angry if he was asked about it so Erwin stayed away from the subject. He got the feeling that she wasn’t around, and Erwin knew the feeling. He didn’t like talking about his mother either. Even though they sat together every lunch hour, Erwin found that he still didn’t know an awful lot about Levi. The boy was extremely private and seemed to calculate exactly what he was willing to share with the group. In regards to the way he dressed or why he always looked sick, they never got a straight up answer. Levi said he preferred to dress that way because it ‘made him look cooler’ and that he looked sick because he had a slow immune system or something (whatever that meant). Hanji had then gone on to rant about the immune system for the rest of the lunch hour, but Erwin didn’t pay too much attention. Laughing, Levi had called them weird but seemed to listen in all the same. 

Weirdly, Erwin got the feeling that Levi sort of liked Hanji even though he would angrily protest otherwise and call them ‘shitty four-eyes’. That comment got Levi a mini lecture off of Nile who insisted swearing was bad. Levi told him to fuck off. Erwin didn’t know someone could swear that much, or that someone would swear so willingly. His father would go berserk if he heard Erwin speak like that, but Levi said his Uncle swore all the time so it was fine for him to do it because his Uncle didn’t care.

The teachers disagreed, and he eventually got scolded for it. Not that it stopped him.

Over time, Erwin had become oddly attached to Levi. His moody attitude was a nice break from Hanji’s constant enthusiasm and Miche’s cool aloofness, plus Levi seemed to have a penchant for the funniest toilet jokes (or at least they were funny to nine year old kids). Through their friendship, Levi ended up attending class a lot more but he’d get annoyed if he couldn’t be sat next to Erwin, Hanji or Miche. Erwin had assumed that, since Levi never really showed up to class, that he’d be falling behind on work. Being the person he was, Erwin had concocted a whole plan to invite Levi over to his house and they could study together but as it turns out, Levi had no problem catching up with the work on his own. It put a bit of a damper on Erwin’s mood because he knew Levi wouldn’t come over to his place unless he felt that there was a genuine reason to do so.

There was something that was bugging Erwin though; sometimes Levi wouldn’t show up to school for a few days or even a week. At first Erwin had put it up to his low immune system but ever since Levi had started sitting with them, he didn’t seem to really get sick. Ever. So that idea was out of the window. He’d noticed how Levi would always come back agitated and more snappy than usually, and he seemed to devour anything that Erwin put in front of him (to the point where he’d taken to asking his father to pack even more food, just so he could sate Levi’s appetite). Levi, as secretive as ever, wasn’t giving away anything so Erwin decided to just be content with letting it be.

However, his lunchbox habits didn’t go unnoticed by his father who’d realised a bit of an erratic change in what Erwin wanted to eat for lunch. He’d taken the time to make a mental list of all the foods Levi liked so that he’d always have something on hand for him, even if Erwin himself didn’t like it. This lead to his father asking questions. Questions that Erwin wasn’t really prepared to answer. Not to mention his father was a very persuasive interrogator and had promised him pizza if Erwin told him what was going on and, well, Erwin couldn’t say no to a pizza.

So he ended up telling (maybe against his better judgement). He got the pizza in the end, but he didn’t feel like it was worth it. He had a bad feeling. Everything he knew about Levi, from the rumours to the facts, he’d told to his father who just seemed to get more and more concerned about it. Erwin didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to his dad but he knew better than to question. Somehow, telling him felt like snitching.

Then there was trouble, real trouble. Levi disappeared from lunch and classes. No one saw him walking to school and no one saw him leave. He’d quite literally vanished. The teachers said nothing that wasn’t in hushed whispers, things that Erwin couldn’t hear from the back of the classroom. He knew something had happened to Levi but he couldn’t figure out what. When he realised that Levi wasn’t coming back, he found himself more upset than he would have expected. Over the course of a few months, Erwin had grown more attached to Levi than he should’ve (considering that their first meeting was an aggressive one, to say the least).

He didn’t find out what happened to Levi until his father sat him down and told him. At the time, it wasn’t something that Erwin could really understand. Having heard about Levi from his son, Erwin’s father had contacted the school with some concerns over Levi’s wellbeing which then translated into the school contacting Kenny, who was the infamous Uncle that Levi spoke about. His father didn’t give much more information than that Kenny had moved out of their home with Levi shortly after the school had gotten in touch with him. Whatever it was, Erwin assumed Kenny didn’t want people in his business. Erwin felt guilty, because if he hadn’t told his dad then Levi would still be with them. He knew it would be hard for Levi to make new friends, he’d only started to like Erwin because the blonde gave him copious amounts of food. 

Not everyone was going to be like Erwin. His dad told him he’d done the right thing, and that wherever Levi was he was sure the authorities would find him and take care of him. Erwin didn’t like the police all that much though, but he was careful not to tell his father that. Something inside him felt wrong. He didn’t like the idea of not having Levi around. Who was going to make sure he ate at lunch? Who would he copy his homework off of? Erwin worried that people wouldn’t be nice to Levi because Levi was notoriously difficult to get along with (to the point where even Erwin had struggled at times).

There was so much he felt, and he didn’t even know the names for at least three quarters of what he was feeling. He knew he missed Levi, and he found himself missing Levi for every year that he wasn’t around. Which was, for the record, a lot of years. Hanji was careful about bringing it up and even Miche seemed a little disheartened at the empty seat at their lunchtable. At nine years old, Erwin thought he knew better than the world. He believed in making wishes at 11:11 and whispering your dreams to shooting stars. He believed in hope and miracles and he believed that there was a force out there that would hear him and bring Levi back to him.

But then he was ten, eleven, fourteen, seventeen and there was no Levi. He was nineteen and then he was twenty and there was still no Levi.

Then he was twenty-one, and it’d been a long time since he’d made wishes at 11:11 or poured his dreams to a shooting star. But when he was twenty-one, somehow there was Levi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first chapter over.  
> I originally had an entirely different idea planned for this fic but I ended up hating how I wrote it so I essentially banged out this chapter in three days to keep my promise of having it up by the end of the week. I'm not really a fan of this chapter either if I'm honest, but it feels better than my other ideas. I tend to be very dialogue heavy so I was trying to cut that down too, yknow? If you're reading this, I'd love it for you to interact and let me know what you think! I also tried to make the writing seem more...childish to feel appropriate to Erwin's age? I kinda failed on that aspect too, I think. I don't know many nine year olds who use the term 'aloof' seriously but here we are.   
> Also, am I the only one who spells Hanji and Miche's names like that? Also, I pronounce Miche's name as 'Meek-ay' and I have no bloody clue as to why.


End file.
